Beauty salon for children creates a stink

"A beauty parlour has become the first in Britain to offer makeovers, fake tans and facials exclusively for children and toddlers, it has emerged," says everybody's favourite Conservative broadsheet The Daily Telegraph before going to list the services available at the salon, Trendy Monkeys of Brentwood, including "fruit smoothie facials, mini pedicures, manicures or make-up application, hair “up-dos” and haircuts." And all this in the same week as the Government's new proposals to combat the sexualisation of children! Keen eyes will note that brazilians and vajazzles do not appear.

Trendy Monkeys. Doesn't look all that sexual, does it? Unless monkeys in tutus do it for you. They probably do for some people, but we'd prefer not to Google anything like that just in case we see images.

Apparently, girls as young as one year old can be treated to ""Princess pamper parties", which costs several hundred pounds" which begin with them and up to five friends being "picked up in a pink limousine" and taken to the salon, where doting parents "can pay for extra services including spray tans while having a photographer follow them around."

Professor Judy Hutchings of the Centre for Evidence Based Early Intervention told the paper that the salon represents "not just the sexualisation but the commercialisation of children." We dislike the sexualisation of children as much as any other normal adult, but the commercialisation bit is stretching things a bit far. The same could be said about The Beano, Ladybird books, Dinky cars and all the other kiddies' products that were with us in that delightful bit of the 1950s with the rosy glow around it, when children were innocent creatures of joy and light and went around with scabby knees saying "brilliant!" and drinking lashings and lashings of ginger beer. Precisely the same thing is going on in the half-timbered cottages of the Black Forest where Geppetto hand carves toys for sale to tourists, in the Tridias shops that were so beloved among the upper middle classes for their traditional toys and lack of the latest kill-em-up videogames, and everywhere else that toys or anything else marketed at and for children has ever been sold.

Tellingly, the Toryrag points out early on in the story that the salon, which opened last weekend, "is located in an area featured in the ITV reality television show The Only Way Is Essex." Two members of the cast were in fact at the opening of the salon, as revealed by The Daily Mail which, predictably, takes a similar line to the broadsheet and has a picture of the celebs in question in Marbella ("Marbella? How vulgar!"). Which rather begs the question: what do we have here? A story which raises legitimate concerns over the way children are being raised in modern society or an opportunity for the newspaper's readers to enjoy a spot of "haw haw, look how tasteless the working classes like the ones in that dreadful programme (which none of us watched, of course, because we're much too highbrow) are, aren't we so much better than them?"-style upper middle class snobbish solidarity over their breakfast coffee this morning?

Boris Johnson: £250K is "chicken feed"

Boris Johnson, eh? We never quite know what to make of him. As a Tory politician, we have to hate him on principle - but then he goes and commissions a London School of Economics report which utterly demolishes a fair old chunk of anti-immigrant racist philosophy. But next thing you know, it turns out he tried to claim back the cost of a Royal British Legion poppy wreath on expenses so you have to hate him again. You just can't tell - is he yet another Conservative scumbag or is he a good bloke?

Boris Johnson must keep his head in a bucket to be so blind to the realities of the everyday lives of most of the people he represents if he thinks £250K is chicken feed. Hmm...come to think of it, that explains the hairstyle too.

Boris is paid just short of £140,000 per year as the Mayor of London, which is a pretty good wage by anyone's standards - he does a very important job, after all, and the people of London obviously have enough faith in him to have voted for him to get the position. People have been wondering just lately if he's truly committed to the job though, because he also writes a column every week for the Daily Telegraph and he gets another £250,000 for doing so. £390,000 per annum - tasty.

David Cameron, the Tory leader, has instructed his MPs to give up all outside work because the public are of the opinion that they should focus wholly on their Government jobs and he wants to get them on his side before Gordon Brown thinks of doing the same thing, in the hope that he may be able to persuade the last remaining Labour voters to vote for the Conservatives instead. But Boris thinks it is “wholly reasonable” that he continues writing his columns because, he says, "I happen to write extremely fast. I don’t see why on a Sunday morning I shouldn’t knock off an article, if someone wants to pay me for that article then that’s their lookout and of course I make a substantial donation to charity." Give yourself a moment to recover from reading the terms "knock off" and "column" in a paragraph about Boris Johnson - we know that it creates disturbing mental images.

Despite his distinctly uncharitable attempt to recover the cost of the wreath, he's not lying on that last point - he does give £50,000 to charity every year, so once again we all have to start wondering if maybe he's a good chap after all.

However, when asked by the BBC's HardTalk television prpgramme whether it's right for him to receive the quarter of a million pounds in addition to his mayoral salary, he replies: "It's chicken feed."

Why did the chicken cross the road? Well, it just happened to be in Knightsbridge and simply couldn't resist popping into Harrods for a tin of Beluga, dahling...

You must have some very well-fed chickens, Boris - even Peter Viggers' ducks would be jealous of them! What do they eat - truffles and caviar? Did you know that rather a high percentage of the people who live in London, the people you are supposed to speak for and represent, have never tasted truffles and caviar? Instead, they have to try to make ends meet on their low or average wages; eating Asda Smart Price frozen meals and whatever they can get in Aldi (you might not have heard of those two places - they're a bit like Fortnum and Mason's, only they sell Lambrini instead of Krug and people usually go there on the bus rather than in the Maybach)? There's a lot of them who can't even afford that: once they've used up their pathetic dole money they have to hunt for food in bins - surely you've seen them when you're out on your bike? Or are you so blind to the realities of the harsh lives led by thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in your city that you don't even notice them, you greedy bastard?

"Londoners struggling through the recession will be astounded that their Mayor is so out of touch with reality," says John Biggs, the Labour deputy leader of the London Assembley. "How can we have any faith in a Mayor who believes earning more than ten times the majority of those whose interests he is supposed to represent amounts to nothing more than chicken feed?"

How indeed. Meanwhile, if Boris doesn't start noticing a bit more of what's going on around him, Ken Livingstone might just be with a chance at getting his old job back in 2012. We don't like him very much either, incidentally.

MR

We're sorry to keep on about it, but here's Shahid Malik again

The Daily Telegraph today claims that the beleaguered Dewsbury MP "failed to tell the whole truth" when questioned about his expenses claims. Mr. Malik, who stepped down from his position as Justice Minister prior to an investigation last month but was subsequently given a new Cabinet position when cleared of allegations, has once again found himself the subject of unwanted attention as new evidence came to light that he had claimed for two separate sets of office space.

Mr. Malik was last month accused of renting a property in his constituency from a friend and business associate, Tahir Zaman, at a preferential rate. However, an inquiry led by Commissioner for Standards Sir Phillip Mawer stated that the cost of the property - £100 per week - was in keeping with local market rates, but criticised him for not being able to provide proper records of all payments. The MP said that due to Mr. Zaman's devout religious belief he had paid a large percentage of the rent in cash - Islam, like Christianity, has strict rules concerning usury (Muslims seem to be better at remembering that bit of the Koran than Christians are with the Bible); for which reason many Muslims prefer to carry out business with as little to do with banks as possible. Sir Phillip, having examined Mr. Malik's records, stated his belief that these payments had in all probability taken place, and Mr. Malik was cleared. Prime Minister Gordon Brown originally refused to publish even a redacted version of the report which led many people - public and media, including us - to suspect that all is not as it ought to be and that there may be skulduggery afoot. The report was eventually published on Wednesday.

The ground floor of Mr. Malik's constituency home is office space. The MP claims that he pays rent on the top floor - which is living space - separately to the rent for the ground floor, and as a result has not broken expenses rules.

Mr. Malik and his staff inherited office space previously used by his Parliamentary predecessor Ann Taylor in May 2005. This office was found to be too small, and so he took on a larger office in the Daisy Hill area of Dewsbury, announcing the move on his website on the 2nd of April '06. He claimed expenses on the new office but continued to also claim for the original space, until April 2008, which is after the date that he says his last member of staff moved during 2007. This netted him a sum of around £6500.

Mr. Malik's expenses show that he claimed for premises known only as "office2," the location of which he originally attempted to keep private - however, the Telegraph has revealed that it is located in the ground floor of his Dewsbury home, which is designated as his main home and as such should not be paid for out of the public purse unlike his London second home, for which an MP is entitled to claim - Mr. Malik has claimed more than £60,000 for his. Essentially, he was claiming for both his second and main homes, which according to The Green Book - the set of guidelines on MPs' expenses - is against the rules, though he says that he had a separate rental agreement on the upper floor, which is living space, of the Dewsbury property. Mr. Malik maintains that he acted within the rules at all times.

Unfortunately for the MP, this seems to be subject to another mysterious informal agreement and he has refused to say how much rent he pays. Had it not have been for the previous controversy and Mr. Malik's astronomically high expenses, including the fact that he is known to have regularly submitted the maximum allowable £400 a month claim for food despite his ministerial salary which is higher than the standard MP's salary of £64,766 (as of April this year), we might even have given him the benefit of the doubt and waited to see if closer investigation showed up anything untoward. But, as they say, shit sticks. Mr. Malik has been the inspiration of so many disparaging column inches just recently that he's been starting to look distinctly shady.

Today, it has been revealed that he did not inform Sir Phillip that he was making a claim to cover the cost of "office2," failing even to mention its existence. Sir Phillip will now face calls from both opposition MPs and the public to reopen his investigation - this could not come at a worse time, since it looks likely Mr. Malik will also have to answer questions from Commissioner for Standards John Lyon on the matter of his continued claims for the original office after moving from it. He is also to be quizzed regarding another property located in Burnley, where he was born and where his parents live. Despite his claims that he has lived in the Dewsbury house since 2004, the Burnley property was designated as his main residence (defined by Commons guidelines as the address at which an MP spends most of his or her time) until its sale, which meant that he did not have to pay capital gains tax when his sister bought the house for £235,000.

Gordon Brown, who has been looking a lot more secure than he did last week after Labour's lowest election results in 90 years and a wave of ministerial resignations, will also now have to face questions from MPs in his own party and the Opposition. Only a week ago, it looked like the PM was on the brink of a leadership challenge which may well have deposed him, and so questions as awkward as whether or not he acted too quickly in reinstating Mr. Malik could not come at a worse time.

Most ridiculous expense claims

Acid Rabbi would like to apologise for the continual references to the Daily Telegraph, but feels it deserves a couple of weeks enjoying all this attention as it has been completely worthless and read only by inconsequential demi-fascists for all the rest of its 154 years. However, for a little light relief, they've come up with a list of what they call the 20 most bizarre examples of MP expenses claims so far. They say bizarre, we say piss-taking.

John Reid (Lab, Airdrie and Shotts) - £1.50 for an ice cube tray (You should have asked! I've got about ten of the things in the kitchen cupboard, you could have had one for nothing!)

Sian James (Lab, Swansea East) - 59p for a chocolate Father Christmas ("Hmm, I don't feel like paying 59p even though I get over 64 thousand quid a year - I'll charge it to the tax-payer. Merry Christmas, one and all!")

Alan Rosindell (Con, Romford) - £1.51 for jellied eels (FFS, mate - you've all had the chance to have whatever you want and get the tax-payer to cough up the cash for it. I'd have been eating truffles and caviar, even though I don't like them)

Margaret Beckett (Lab, Derby South) - £600 for hanging baskets (you've been well ripped off, Maggie. They're only a few quid in B&Q...or did you buy hundreds of them?)

Cheryl Gillan (Con, Chesham and Amersham)- £4.47 for dogfood. Acid Rabbi would not particularly object were he asked to finance a cat's diet, but not a dog's. ;-)

Nick Clegg (LibDem, Sheffield Hallam) - £1.19 for tealights (still, he's a LibDem. Probably needs them for his mediation or some other hippy nonsense.)

Steve Webb (LibDem, Northavon)- 99p for a feather duster. More than one, apparently. I'll bet he doesn't use them personally and we pay for his cleaner too.

Most MPs probably have little idea what a feather duster looks like, since they have cleaners (paid for by us) to look after all that sort of stuff. Here's an example for future reference.